Made in Tarrant: Panthera BioSolutions aims to ‘fill a gap’ for pharmaceutical industry in Fort Worth

Made in Tarrant: Panthera BioSolutions aims to ‘fill a gap’ for pharmaceutical industry in Fort Worth

Jason Mastoris, co-founder of Panthera BioSolutions, speaks to guests on Jan. 11, 2024, at the grand opening of the company’s facility at 5000 S. Freeway, Suite 116, in Fort Worth. (Courtesy photo | Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce)
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Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your business here. 

Jason Mastoris and Hardik Patel are the co-founders of Panthera BioSolutions at 5000 S. Freeway, Suite 116, in Fort Worth. Launched in October 2021, the business offers manufacturing, packaging, product testing, warehousing, logistics and consulting services for pharmaceutical companies. In January, the business opened its facility, which features a training space for pharmaceutical professionals to get hands-on learning experience along with rentable clean rooms. 

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Contact information: 

Website: https://www.pantherabiosolutions.com/

Email: info@pantherabiosolutions.com

Phone: 817-893-6868

The Fort Worth Report spoke with Mastoris and Patel about the business. This interview has been edited for clarity, grammar and length. 

David Moreno: How long have you two known each other? 

Jason Mastoris: I have lived in Texas since 2012 and worked with Novartis and Alcon for several years. I worked in the printing supplies area and moved my way into the aseptic manufacturing space making sterile injectables in a manufacturing plant. It was there I met Hardik and we worked very closely together for several years. Once I left Novartis, in May 2021, Hardik and I reconnected and realized we had a very similar vision for a company. 

Moreno: Speaking of that shared vision, what inspired you both to launch Panthera? 

Mastoris: In the DFW area, we noticed there’s a lot of work needed in workforce development to get trained personnel up to these pharmaceutical spaces. One of the biggest challenges I faced at Novartis was just finding good, trained people that lived locally. This area has never really been a pharmaceutical hotbed. Now with the recent ARPA-H designation that was awarded to DFW, we want to fill the training workforce development gap. 

We also want to fill a gap in rentable clean room space. A clean room is used for the manufacturing of pharmaceutical products. No one in the Fort Worth area has offered clean room spaces for small companies. Instead of having to fully outsource, which costs a lot of money, we will allow them to rent it in our facility where they can complete their products at a fraction of the cost. More importantly, it preserves (small businesses) intellectual property. 

Hardik Patel: Ultimately, we want to provide a full gamut of pharmaceutical services locally. We want to try and be that marketplace that has affordability in place for these startups that are coming up in DFW to get a leg up and get the instruments they need to get started. 

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Mastoris: Right. As Hardik mentioned, we’ve noticed the crazy premiums that people pay to buy pharmaceutical equipment.

Hardik Patel, co-founder of Panthera BioSolutions, speaks at the grand opening of the company’s facility on Jan. 11. (Courtesy photo | Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce)

Moreno: Where did the name Panthera BioSolutions come from? 

Mastoris: When Hardik and I first started the company, we looked at each other and wrote down the top five attributes we want this company to demonstrate. I believe agility was No. 1 on both of our lists. The ability to adapt and be flexible for our clients. We started looking at different animal species and we landed on Panthera, which is a genus that covers lions, leopards, etc. Subconsciously, the fact that we were setting up shop in Panther City may have played a minor role. I don’t want to say definitively, but it’s a great coincidence. 

Moreno: Biotech is booming in North Texas. What fueled the decision to headquarter in Fort Worth rather than Dallas? 

Mastoris: I’m biased because I live in the city of Fort Worth. I’ve seen the growth over the past 10 years, which has been off the charts. The City Council and the mayor (Mattie Parker) are very in favor of biotech growing. It’s a good environment because it’s also untapped. We’re hoping we can stay in Fort Worth long term. 

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Moreno: What are some goals you have for your business? Where do you hope to see it in the future? 

Mastoris: Our short-term goal is to get our packaging, distribution, returns and accountability services up and running to support our first clients, which are coming in Q2. 

Patel: We want to get ourselves in the position where we can be a fully ISO-certified lab, which would let us do our own testing in-house. We want to have that available for our clients by the end of the year. We also want to become industry leaders in Texas and establish ourselves within other big cities, like Houston, San Antonio and Austin. We want to establish ourselves as a preferred choice for training and rentable space and scale that up quickly. 

David Moreno is the health reporter for the Fort Worth Report. His position is supported by a grant from Texas Health Resources. Contact him at david.moreno@fortworthreport.org or @davidmreports on X, formerly known as Twitter.

At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here. 

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